0 to 60 in 1.6 Gigaseconds

Like most people, I get a lot of political email traffic from friends. You know the stuff – the subject line usually starts with “FW:FW”FW”FW:FW…” or something like that. The content sometimes makes a joke at the expense of the party or candidate I didn’t vote for and the friend who sent it to me thought I would get a kick out of it. Frequently, the content tries to make a specific point by referring to some other source of some kind. Since the friend who forwarded me the email knows my political persuasions, the point the email tries to make usually aligns with my beliefs. At the bottom of the email is almost always a line urging me to forward it to more people.

Do you get a lot of these? Do you forward them on?

I probably get about a dozen or more every week. Of the joke-variety of emails, I think about 1 in 50 are funny and original enough to get me to actually send it to some close friends and family. The non-joke ones are usually hard to take and I rarely forward any of them. They are hard to take because I find myself agreeing with the underlying message (again, the friends who send them to me know my political persuasions), but I feel like I’m being manipulated and my defensive shields come online. So I am in a quandary when I get these types of emails. On the one hand, I tend to believe in the underlying message of the emails and truly want to “help the cause”. On the other hand, I don’t like things that play to my passions in order to generate a response. I despise being manipulated.

A recent email really helped me think this through. It was about an article in a magazine that referenced a survey covering the quality of health care received by people in America versus people in Canada or England. The survey results seemed consistent with my personal views and expectations of nationalized health care. Given that, I should forward it on to like-minded people, shouldn’t I? Hmm…, something tells me “no, don’t be manipulated, slow down and think, what’s wrong with this picture?”

This particular email referenced an article from a publication and an organization that supposedly conducted the survey. I checked the web site of the publication and couldn’t find any reference to the article. I tried to find the organization purported to have conducted the survey and couldn’t find anything to suggest it even exists. Lacking any proof of authenticity was reason enough for me to not forward it to anyone else, even though I agree with the underlying message the email and survey was trying to convey. Sorry, the end does not justify a fraudulent means – not to me, not ever.

But I was still bothered by this email and dove into it a little deeper. In my Google searches trying to find the organization who allegedly conducted the survey, I encountered many blogs that actually referred to the exact same survey. In all cases, the blogs had a strong political bias. On one side were blogs that posted the content of the survey almost verbatim to the email I received as if it was totally authentic and the comments from readers were passionate and angry about the dangers easily interpreted from the survey results. On the other side were blogs that posted the content of the email as being yet another example of the conspiracy from the opposite side and the comments from readers were passionate and angry about the greed and stupidity emanating from anyone with views different from their own. I was taken back from how divisive the two polarized perspectives were. Everyone was preaching to their own choir. No one was having constructive dialog or meaningful debate about health care.

That is when it hit me like a ton of bricks: An email like this helps nothing! All it does is help create a mob. It is no wonder that America is being ripped apart by strong divisions that are becoming more convinced that the other side is an enemy to be defeated rather than a teammate to work with. The Internet, the Web, and now Web 2.0 have given us the platform to create great things. They have also given us the platform to join mobs and express our righteous indignation to the mob that is most inclined to listen to it. This is always the danger with technology breakthroughs:

We always understand how to use new technology long before we understand how to master the technology for good purposes.
The Malcolm Principle

I call this the Malcolm Principle because one of my favorite movie quotes is from Jurassic Park, when Jeff Goldblum playing the role of Dr. Ian Malcolm says:

I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility… for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now… you’re selling it, … you want to sell it!

Of course, in the movie Dr. Malcolm is warning about the commercialization of cloning an extinct species, foreshadowing the coming terror of the rest of the movie. But to me, the Malcolm Principle applies repeatedly as technology advances. When voice mail was introduced, people figured out how to use it and then broadcasted 20-minute novels and wondered why people didn’t follow through on the request they mentioned at the end of it. When email was introduced, people figured out how to use it and then sent out an unintelligible collection of words and acronyms to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the company while cc-ing their bosses, causing the entire organization to scratch their respective heads in confusion for a half a day or longer. And before we figure this stuff out, here comes the Internet, the Web, and Web 2.0. I have a theory that as the technology gets more innovative, the Malcolm Principle increases in danger. Harnessing the atom is a pretty powerful innovation, with fantastic positive or disastrous potential.

The Web as the world’s computer has tremendous potential, but is undergoing the Malcolm Principle at this very moment in time. Recognizing this is critical to each of us as individuals, as citizens of a common country, or as members of the same human race on earth. We can use Web 2.0 tools to join mobs and increase the divisions and intolerance between us. Or we can use Web 2.0 tools to eliminate fraudulent practices and bring focus on common ground and innovative brainstorming of solutions to shared problems. It starts with each of us giving more weight to the authenticity of what we encounter on the Web than the alignment of the content of the message to our personal beliefs. It ends with each of us valuing the synergy of diverse thinking over the singular focus of an impassioned mob.

So no, I won’t join a mob and I won’t forward this email!